psychic vision. It was easy. You rolled your eyes, clutched your head, and intoned stuff you’d learned about the person you were conning via basic internet research.
She gave him a fierce grin, enjoying the game. “Okay, Pierce the Psychic. What’s my foster mother’s secret?”
He pushed back a lock of auburn hair that the wind was blowing into his eyes. “If you mean the woman who runs the crime circus you and Merlin were raised in, I don’t need to be psychic to know that. I’ve met her. Her name is Janet Gold, she has a fake mindreading act under the name of Madame Fortuna, and she turns into a parrot.”
Natalie was taken aback. Either Ransom really had met Janet, or Merlin had told him the secret of the Fabulous Flying Chameleons—both its secrets! It not only was a crime circus, but all the performing animals were shifters. But after another moment’s thought, Natalie dismissed the idea that Merlin might have blabbed. He thought of Janet as his mom—no “foster” or other caveats about it. He’d die before revealing anything that could harm her.
“How is Janet?” Natalie said hesitantly, feeling guilty that she didn’t already know.
“She’s fine,” Ransom reassured her. “So is everyone else. The circus ran into a bit of a problem, but it’s over now.”
Natalie was in a quandary. She didn’t believe in psychic visions, but he’d found her somehow…
He broke into her thoughts. “Why don’t you call Merlin? He can confirm everything I’m saying.”
Her hands flew up in an automatic warding-off gesture. “I don’t want to call Merlin! Don’t tell him you saw me.”
“Why? He’s worried about you. You must know that. You left the circus without telling anyone why or where you were going.”
Natalie gave an uneasy shrug, then a wave of her hand, as if to brush the question aside. He was making her feel guilty, and she hated feeling guilty.
But rather than drop the subject, he pressed forward. “Why don’t you want to talk to Merlin?”
“See, now, that is exactly the sort of thing the spirits would tell you if you really were psychic.”
Ransom gave a frustrated sigh. “Okay, first of all, there’s no spirits involved. Second of all, that’s not how it works. I know things—a lot of things—but not everything.”
He put an odd emphasis on know, as if it didn’t mean quite the same thing to him as it did to most people. It could almost make her believe… but no, that was ridiculous. He was putting on a truly world-class act, but that was all.
“Right,” Natalie said. “That’s always the excuse. Drop the psychic act, okay? If you’re friends with Janet and Merlin, you should know it’s professional courtesy not to scam a scammer.”
He rubbed his forehead, but not in a “the spirits are talking to me” way. More in a “this conversation is giving me a headache” way. Then he looked straight into her eyes, pinning her with the force of his dark gaze. “Did you leave the circus because you don’t want anyone to know you only have a year to live?”
His words struck her like a gust of strong wind. She actually took a step backwards, right into her parachute. As she started to trip, he grabbed her shoulders, steadying her until she could stand again.
Once again, she felt that jolt of sexual chemistry, but this time it did nothing but add to her roiling emotions and the buzzing hive of thoughts flying around her head. There was no way he could know that. She’d told no one, and she’d given the doctor a false name and a fake insurance card to go with it.
Maybe he really was psychic.
More importantly, he knew.
Ransom was the only person in the world who knew that she, Natalie Nash, had only a year to live.
It all hit her so intensely that she slipped from his grasp and sat down hard on the crumpled mound of parachute cloth.
Natalie wasn’t sure how long she’d sat there, wrestling with so many feelings that she couldn’t even sort them all out, before she realized that she was warmer. A cold breeze had been blowing in from the sea, chilling her without her even noticing it, but it had stopped. She glanced up and saw Ransom crouched on his heels in front of her, shielding her from the wind with his body.
With an awkward abruptness, he said, “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? It’s the truth.” Then, the realization coming just ahead of the words, she added, “I’m